PICA presents the politically and historically immersed artist Andrea Geyer for the U.S. premiere of Geyer’s two-channel video installation, Three Chants Modern. Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York during a research residency at the museum in 2013 and made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, Three Chants Modern looks at the network of women thinkers, social and political activists, artists and philanthropists who were the creative drivers and institutional pillars of the Modernist Project in New York in the early part of the 20th century. Three Chants addresses how history and power are constructed, in part, through the undeniable legacy of these women in contrast to their sparse representation in the formal history of the period. Specifically it marks the undeniable intertwinedness of Modernism and socio-political reforms in the United States. Beyond the rediscovery of such facts, the work invites us to reflect on how and why we have unlearned to recognize the ground breaking historical work of many women in today’s understanding of culture, even though the traces of their labor are present everywhere.

“Her works invite us to rethink time, to liberate it from ideologically framed histories and discover it as a radical non-linear presence and source of potential that continuously surrounds us.” – Vivian Ziherl, 2013

“Geyer’s installations—guided by expertise in photography and research, as well as the tendencies of a storyteller—offer critical sites where common sense can become visible, and where this visibility can open towards the potential for resistance.” – Thom Donovan, Art21 Magazine, 2012

—Three Chants Modern is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Art, Visual Artists Network and National Performance Network, Allie Furlotti, The Calligram Fund for New Work, PICA’s Visual Art Circle, and Sarah Miller Meigs and Andrew Meigs, with special thanks to Alhena Katsof.

The Visual Artists Network is made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Art, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Lambent Foundation – a project of the Tides Center and Southwest Airlines.

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